Rikka Takarada
is Yuta Hibiki's friend and one of the lead supporting characters in SSSS.GRIDMAN. Despite being apprehensive about Gridman Alliance at first, she develops a strong determination to help Yuta fight kaiju in order to protect her loved ones. History SSSS.GRIDMAN When her classmate Yuta passed out, Rikka and her mother brought him into their shophouse, where he rested. After Yuta woke up without his memories, she found him talking to Gridman on an old computer called Junk. She was then tasked by her mother to help the boy get back home and is rather surprised (and annoyed) by his memory loss and his visions of kaiju in the mist. The next day, Rikka brought Yuta and Sho Utsumi to see Gridman but they saw nothing. When Ghoulghilas attacked, she saw Yuta get sucked into the computer and transform into Gridman to fight but when he was losing, she relayed Utsumi's message to Gridman via the computer, giving him the motivation to win. When she discovers that all her classmates who died in Ghoulghilas's attack are having their history altered, she worries for the safety of her friends and the memories she shares with them. Motivated by Samurai・Calibur, she continues fighting along with Gridman to protect those she cares about and her memories with them. Rikka encounters Anti's human form while skipping class and offers him food, but rejects when he gets called by Akane Shinjo. She later saw Gridman fight and lose to Anti, which makes her worry for Yuta, and even more about people forgetting about him. She and Utsumi go to check Yuta's house, but decide not to when they think of the possibility of Yuta being forgotten just like the rest of the dead students. Rikka gets into a brief argument with Utsumi until the Neon Genesis Junior High Students enter the Junk Shop and get her to call Yuta using her phone and surprisingly, he pick ups. After Yuta and Gridman come back to fight Anti and win, she apologizes for not picking up her phone when Yuta called her. When she starts to notice that kaiju appear around her, Rikka starts to worry that all this is her fault. While going shopping, Rikka thought of Akane and decided to buy a pink pass case for her. Meeting Anti once more, seeing him rummage through trash for food, she gives him Special Dogs and then sneaks him into her house to give him a bath. Yuta tries to explain to her what he heard of Akane from Anosillus the 2nd, but she refuses to believe him, saying that his story is too far-fetched and ridiculous. After seeing a city in the sky during Gridman's battle did she start to have some faith in what Yuta said. As the day of the school's Culture Festival drew closer, Yuta, Rikka and Utsumi decided to confront Akane directly and she shows off her newest kaiju, Mecha Ghoulghilas, and dares the trio to try to stop her, confident that they would fail. Seeing not much choice other than to fight, Yuta and Utsumi come up with a plan which was to make Gridman and the Assist Weapons sortie at only half their size so that they can all fight together. However, Rikka cannot bring herself to fight her friend. This sparks an argument between Rikka and Utsumi, with Yuta and Gridman being on middle ground. While riding the bus home, she tries to talk Akane into not unleashing Mecha Ghoulghilas but Akane replies that no matter what she does, nobody can hate her in the world she created and that includes Rikka, who Akane says was created using her kaiju, to be her friend. Disturbed, she gets off the bus early. Feeling useless, Yuta cheers her up by telling her of her contributions to the team and she responds by saying that she was going to apologize to Utsumi. The next day, Mecha Ghoulghilas was defeated by Full Powered Gridman and after that, she dressed up in a captain's outfit for the school Culture Festival, and she apologized to Utsumi. Rikka was trapped in a dream world during Bujack's attack, wherein history was rewritten so that the monster attacks never happened and all of Akane's desires were fulfilled. She started to spend more time with Akane and even went over to her house, and met Alexis・Kerib. Eventually, she realizes it is all just a dream, rejecting Akane's offer to keep going on with it forever. Rikka remembers the events that happened reality and rush over to Yuta and Utsumi, and then Gridman wakes the three of them up. After reawakening, Rikka tells the gang that she has something important to say. She tells them what Akane revealed to her; that everyone in the city, as well as the city itself, were made by her kaiju. This makes Utsumi worried and Yuta want to confront Akane. Arriving at her house next door, Max forces the door open, revealing a place not unlike the city in the sky. After Gridman faces another kaiju, she witnessed Akane stabbing Yuta. Rikka and Utsumi stay by Yuta's side while he is hospitalized and met Anti, finding out his true identity. Rikka then went to school to check on Akane. There, she found out from Namiko and Hass that the city was no longer resetting, as she saw pictures of Gridman and Gridknight on their phones. She later went somewhere else and found Akane on a rooftop, and tried to talk her out of her depression. Unfortunately, their conversation was interupted by Alexis, who used his Instance Abreaction on Akane. Alexis tells Rikka of what she really is; a Repli-Compoid that Akane created to her own benefit. Rikka is unphased by his words and goes off with Yut/Gridman when he arrives to regroup with Utsumi, who was still in the hospital. For Gridman's last Access Flash, she typed in the Access Code: "GRIDMAN", which unsealed his true form. After the final battle was over, she had one last talk with Akane and finally gave her the pink pass case she bought. Before Gridman and the Neon Genesis Junior High Students departed, Gridman admitted Yuta's feelings for Rikka on his behalf. Rikka and Utsumi watched over Yuta as he woke up in the Junk Shop. Data *Height: 155 cm *Weight: Unknown *Age: 15 years *Date of Birth: 5 December, 2002 *Blood Type: O Powers and Weapons *Typing: Not so much an ability in and of itself, but Utsumi notes that she can type fast. *Telepathic Link: For a brief time after Ghoulghilas's attack, she could see Gridman on Junk as well, but could not hear him. *Mediumship: Rikka has the ability to see Gridman in his computer and the Illusion Monsters the day after her first experience of a kaiju attack. Trivia *Rikka's counterpart from Denkou Choujin Gridman is Yuka Inoue, a female student who is the ace in her classroom but befriended Naoto Sho and Ippei Baba as she helped in controlling the Assist Weapons in combat to aid Gridman in battle. **Ironically, her traits lean more to Ippei than Yuka because her home is the base of operations for Gridman Alliance and the fact that Junk is situated in her home. Furthermore, her mother operates Junk Shop Aya, a nod to Interior Space Aya, the shop run by Ippei Baba's father. *Like many other characters, Rikka's color scheme and design are inspired by a character from Transformers Shattered Glass; in her case, the heroic incarnation of Megatron. **SG Megatron was a mathematician prior to the war in Cybertron, which translates well into Rikka's computer skills. **The positioning of the orange hairband on her right arm is a nod to Megatron's Fusion Cannon in most incarnations. The hairband also has a bird-like pattern, a reference to his Minicon. *Her surname may be a reference to Takara, the toy company which sponsored Denkou Choujin Gridman and Transformers in Japan. *The song she sings in her introduction scene is Believe, a popular children's song in Japan. She sings this song again in episode 4. *For some reason, she is unable to have carbonated drinks. This is first mentioned in Voice Drama 1.1 and then in episode 2. *According to the voice drama episodes: **Rikka first talked to Yuta when she skipped a ball game and went back to class and saw him alone. **Rikka was once a hair model for a parlor in Aoyama. **Her shoes are apparently worth 18,000 Yen, and were given to her by her grandfather. **Her friends find her diet to be odd, such as eating fruit granola and smoothies in the morning and having cheese fondue for dinner. According to Rikka, her mother made her follow this diet but she says that was because Rikka wanted to avoid calories when she was 12 years old. **She has an older brother , who was never seen or heard of up to this point. This is a reference to her counterpart Yuka Inoue, who also has an older brother. **Her mother states that because she is reaching puberty, her hormones are acting up and her body is changing. The latter part may be a sneaky reference to director Akira Amemiya's specific request for her design, which was to accentuate the lower half of her body. **She has a tokusatsu magazine in her bag , which was lent to her by Utsumi. id:Rikka Takarada Category:Female Characters Category:Human Characters Category:SSSS.GRIDMAN Category:SSSS.GRIDMAN Characters Category:Allies Category:Civilians Category:Gridman Alliance Category:Gridman Alliance Members